


materfamilias

by mouseymightymarvellous



Series: cicadas chirping in the dark and moths around the porch light (you come home) [6]
Category: Naruto
Genre: BAMF Women, Background Relationships, Gen, POV Second Person, Trans Female Character, Trans!Naruto, matrilineal inheritence, rin headcanons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:13:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25564141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouseymightymarvellous/pseuds/mouseymightymarvellous
Summary: You are born as all true Uzumaki are born: the winds are howling at the door as your mother screams in recognition and the rains are the waves, beating against the roof and down to the shore, eroding and inevitable.
Series: cicadas chirping in the dark and moths around the porch light (you come home) [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1486949
Comments: 8
Kudos: 32





	materfamilias

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a fantastic anonymous ask someone sent me about the Uzumaki women, sealing, the narrative weight afforded to female characters, and trans!Naruto., which you can find [here](https://mouseymightymarvellous.tumblr.com/post/624783423365660672/okay-so-maybe-ive-been-hittin-the-vacation-juice), and which further references [a bit of meta I wrote](https://mouseymightymarvellous.tumblr.com/post/624656075468275712/speaking-of-sakura-if-kishi-was-gonna-go-so-hard) on Team 7 as a Trinity, where Naruto's role is that of Transformer to Sasuke's Destruction and Sakura's Creation.

**_i. mito_ **

You are born as all true Uzumaki are born: the winds are howling at the door as your mother screams in recognition and the rains are the waves, beating against the roof and down to the shore, eroding and inevitable.

You are born as all true Uzumaki are born: storm and salt and fury.

Firstborn, your aunties paint seals like destiny onto your wrinkled brow, your clenched palms, your kicking feet.

You are born to rule and ruin.

But your red hair won’t grow in for weeks yet, and not even stars like yours are enough to shine through and herald your path.

One day you’ll pick one of those stars out of the sky and eat it.

What are stars to storms? You were born to one day rule and you were born to ruin.

Will the history books remember you? You are screaming, here, now, and all of Uzushiogakure knows that you have arrived. The island is thrumming with your presence. How could you ever be forgotten, when—right now—all of Uzushiogakure is howling in recognition, seals on your wrinkled brow and your clenched palms and your kicking feet?

How could the history books ever hope to hold you? Red and rule and ruin.

A storm for a soul; they’ll never know what quite to do with women like you.

**_ii. kushina_ **

Your inheritance is triptych.

Seal.

Chain.

Demon.

All three are wrapped so nicely around your throat; eight years old and offered up on an altar with a blade through your ribs.

“I don’t want it!” you howl. “You can’t make me.”

The storm looks you in the face. It is not a kind face, but then, the waves against the cliffs of Uzushiogakure where they drop straight down to the ocean, away from where they slope gentle and long unto the edge of the horizon, are proof that water is an accommodating force only as long as it takes to erode the ground out from under your feet.

“Good. You were not made for submitting.”

One day, you will know the strength in the curve of your spine, and you will teach a man who loves you as the moon loves the tides or lightning loves the tree how to ink the seals down each notch of bone that your aunties once painted upon your spine as you came into the world, screaming. One day, you will know the fury in the hollow of your palms, your throat, your mouth. On day, you will know.

But today, you are eight years old, and they have put a blade through your ribs and called it destiny.

Rage. Rage against the rule and the ruin.

One day, you will open the soft fury of your mouth, and a storm will press a star behind your teeth.

But you do not need to swallow it today.

Straighten your spine.

You were not made to go quietly to your fate.

**_o. rin_ **

Your foremother etched a leaf into her brow for love of her cousin, the woman who should have been king, the woman who bought peace for the price of rule.

Your aunties carved tear tracks down your face, as all the women of your family have born since your foremother first turned her back on Uzushiogakure, eyes set on the woman-king’s—stormborn, salt-crowned—back, as they set out for peace. You have worn them for all of your short, violent life, and you will wear them unto your death.

And, yes, your are wearing them unto your death.

The storm under your skin is howling, now.

If there are tears on your face, then there have been tears on your face since the day you were born.

You have known you were a weapon since you were four years old and they put a blade in your palm and a leaf on your brow. This is destiny. This is accident.

You never should have sold rule for peace.

You are ruler of your body no longer. You haven’t had rule of your body since you were four years old.

Peace. That was what these stars were supposed to have bought.

The storm under your skin is fury and sound.

The star behind your teeth is burning.

Yours is a legacy of grief.

This is not a world of women-kings you have been born to. Your foremothers sold that inheritance for peace.

So be it.

You have been crying since the day you were born.

So be it.

A weapon. 

The inevitable erosion of waves, of storms, of tears.

Maybe you never should have sold rule for peace, but peace is yours to keep.

The moon loves the tide.

The lightning loves the tree.

**_iii. naruto_ **

Your mother howled the day you were born, the storm rolling out of her to unmake the world.

You were born with your umbilical cord wrapped around your throat, and your father cried as he etched destiny into you.

These should never have been your stars in the sky.

Maybe these would have always been your stars: you took the whole burning weight of them onto your tongue like mother’s milk and screamed into the night like a storm being birthed.

They don’t tell you your father’s name, but you wear his likeness.

Is there anyone left alive who can tell you that your smile is all your mother’s?

They etched your forefathers into mountains to touch the sky, and yet they forget how the name of your foremothers is carved into the meat of their shoulders, strong enough to hold up the sky.

They should have been there to carve grace to your wrinkled brow, happiness to your clenched palms, strength to your kicking feet, but only your father was left—with the art of your history and none of the knowledge—to wrap destiny around your throat.

Who are you, oh stormborn child?

You swallowed a star like mother’s milk, and it’s the only gift from your mother that you will ever know.

The rest, you'll have to figure out yourself.

When the history books remember you, will they know what to say?

A storm for a soul; they’ve never known what quite to do with women like you. This is not a world of women-kings you have been born to. Your foremothers sold that inheritance for peace.

Yours is a legacy of grief.

But water erodes.

Straighten your spine.

You were not made to go quietly to your fate.

Why should you sue for peace?

Your father’s eyes and your mother’s smile.

A woman was once born on an island now forgotten to time, to red and rule and ruin: yours is a legacy of grief.

Water erodes.

Raise your face to the storm.

You were born to this.

The winds are howling at the door and your mothers are screaming in recognition and the rains are the waves and you are the peace your mothers sacrificed for.


End file.
